


Peaceful Travelers

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: American Politics, Gen, Mashup, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The inauguration of Barack Obama brings tourists to Washington, D.C. All sorts of tourists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peaceful Travelers

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Half of this was scrawled illegibly in my planner between classes on a Friday afternoon. I don't know what it is about me and Rodney and Time Lords.

Detective Maria Alvarez didn't consider herself paranoid by nature, but neither had she risen through the ranks by being oblivious to her surroundings. Especially on a day like today. True, as a DC cop she'd worked security for plenty of big functions in the past—parades and speeches, galas and conferences—but something about today still different. Today was a little bit…more, somehow, though more _what_ she couldn't put her finger on. More dangerous, is what the Secret Service guys would tell her, which was why she and Franklin were out in the cold and wind, too far from the Mall to even hear the roar of the crowds.

So when she noticed the low, pulsing thrum—a noise she felt as much as heard—she immediately started scanning the area for the source. The street was closed to vehicle traffic, and the pedestrians still streaming by were almost uniformly empty-handed, so it couldn't be a boom box… "You hear that?" she called to Franklin.

He cocked his head and listened for a minute. "Sounds to like the wind's picking up. Just what we need, huh?"

Maria glanced down the alley at her back and saw some plastic wrappers and torn pieces of cardboard drifting around the bend…the bend that should've lead to a dead-end at a closed-off loading dock. She knew the kind of tricks a strong wind could play when it got between buildings, but something about the drifting garbage didn't feel right. "I'm going to go check it out," she announced.

Franklin snorted. "There's nothing back there, Alvarez. It got swept this morning."

"Just humor me, okay?" she said, sliding one hand under her coat to grip her weapon. She moved quickly and carefully down the alley and poked her head around the corner.

The loading dock was no longer empty. Packed perpendicularly across the faded guide lines was what appears to be a small Winnebago. Its windows and windshield were tinted, its body was beige with brown and orange stripes, and for a moment its emergency blinkers pulsed in time with the deep throb of that peculiar noise. When it stopped, the lights switched off, and the swirling breeze finally died down.

An ordinary-looking man poked his head from the door in the back of the Winnie. "Oh, hello," he said when he noticed Maria. "Be right with you." Then he shut the door again.

Maria stared at the RV for a few minutes, and then looked left and right. The alley dead-ended in every direction but the one she'd just come from. There was no way for something with a twenty-four-food chassis to just _sneak up on them._ She leaned back and whistled to Franklin. "We've, uh, we've got an unauthorized vehicle back here."

"What do you mean, unauthorized vehicle?" he called back.

The door opened again. The many came back out, now wearing a long scarf and a garish orange fleece. She immediately categorized him as a white male, late thirties, about 5'10" and built like he enjoyed his desserts, with thinning brown hair and blue eyes. He practically bounced down to the pavement and stuck a hand into the dark interior of the Winnie, helping a much smaller woman with a caramel complexion and a long leather coat, one that seemed to be held together by strips of rawhide laced through eyelets in the joints. "Hurry up, hurry up," the man said. "We don't want to be late."

"Sir," Maria called, and flashed her badge at him. "Can I see some identification?"

"Eh?" The man blinked at her for a moment, then raised his chin imperiously. "Oh, yes, you. Nice to meet you, Officer. I'm called the Doctor, and this is Teyla, the plucky young girl who assists me in my research." Something in Maria's face—or perhaps the dubious expression of Teyla, who might have been plucky but was clearly no girl—caused this Doctor to visibly deflate after a moment's silence. "Did I say something wrong?" he asked warily. "Is this not a plucky-young-girl kind of decade? We are in 2009, right? Washington, D.C.? January 20th?"

Before Maria could verify the date for him, another voice came out of the shadows of the doorway, echoing far more than seemed possible. "Now, now, don't tell me we're lost," someone drawled.

"Of course we're not lost!" the Doctor said indignantly. "I know exactly where we are! Within certain, ah, parameters. Now, if you've put away all your things that go boom, we're wasting time here!"

Teyla, meanwhile, told Maria with a reassuring smile, "Do not be alarmed. We are but peaceful travelers."

Before Maria could manage to be alarmed, about things going boom or anything else, a man in black slunk through the door. He wore a leather jacket, but it was open despite the cold, revealing the enticingly tight T-shirt underneath; his pants were slung low on narrow hips, and the thigh holster that pulled the fabric in fascinating ways carried a banana, not a gun. The man leaned languidly against the side of the RV and gave Maria a knowing smile. "Hi there," he said, "I'm Major John Sheppard."

"Stop it," the Doctor said, folding his arms across his chest.

"Stop what?" Sheppard said with a little pout.

The Doctor made an expressive gesture. "Stop being _you!"_

Teyla, who had apparently forgiven the plucky-young-girl comment, laid a hand on his arm. "Doctor. Are we not here to enjoy an historic occasion together?" she asked softly.

"Assuming that's where we are," Sheppard said.

"We are _exactly_ where are!" the Doctor declared, and continued without pausing. "I mean, come on, I've been to this inauguration four or five times before now, I can find it with my eyes shut. Even though I can't remember if it's four or five exactly, and one of those involved a paradox and a pipe organ and I've never been entirely sure how to count it…."

Maria felt a desperate need to get a handle on the situation. "Sir," she said, "I'm going to need to see some identification and a parking permit for that…vehicle. Otherwise I'm going to have to—"

"Oh, all right, fine," the Doctor said, and started feeling through his pockets. He eventually produced something that looked very much like a billfold, or the leatherette holder in which Maria carried her ID and badge, and thrust it at her. "Here, go on, take it. That should show everything's in order. VIP security passes for the Doctor plus three guests."

Maria very gingerly accepted the fold and opened it up. There was a piece of paper inside, and when she looked at it for a moment she had a feeling like her eyes were trying to cross, or that they weren't crossing when they should. But then she could clearly see the tickets and credentials, and the vehicle registration for a 1978 Minnie Winnie. She studied the RV carefully, but it matched the description, down to the custom Ontario plates that said TARDIS. She looked at the Doctor, Teyla and Sheppard carefully—one looked irate, one serene, and one smiled in a way that was distracting, and perhaps even charming, but by no means innocent.

Eventually she asked, "So where's your third guest?"

"Mmm?" The Doctor looked around as if he'd just noticed he had only two companions handy. "Oh, right, almost forgot about the tin dog." He began to pound on the door of Winnie and bellowed. "Hey! Tin Dog! Get a move on!"

Sheppard winced, and Teyla rolled her eyes. "There is no need to shout, Doctor," she said.

"Hey, he's the one who said he wouldn't believe until he saw it." He knocked on the door again and whistled. "Hey! Here, boy!"

At that point Maria would not have been completely surprised if an actual dog, tin or not, had come bounding obediently from the back of the RV. Instead a black teen in a bulky parka hopped down, giving the Doctor a baleful look. "That's not my name," he said hotly, but the Doctor just busied himself locking the door. The young man noticed Maria and gave her a nervous smile. "My name's not Tin Dog," he repeated. "He just calls me that. My name's Aiden. I don't know why he called me the Tin Dog."

"Nice to meet you," Maria said warily. "I'm Detective Alvarez."

"Detective Alvarez," the Doctor repeated. "That's just wonderful. So, since all our documents are in order and this is still for the time being a free country, I assume we can go?"

She took one last glance at the credentials, and got that cross-eyed feeling again for a split second, but no, they were perfectly legit. She handed them back. "All right, uh, Doctor, but you know this isn't a legal parking space."

"Well, of course I know that," he said. "But this is the only way we're going to actually get to the Mall to see anything. Besides, I used all the good ones up the last four times I was here. Five times. Whatever."

"Did you get to see it those times too?" Aiden asked him as they began to walk away.

"Partly," the Doctor said. "Though the last time I missed the whole thing, I'm afraid. Got stuck in the Metro."

"What happened?" Teyla asked.

"Eh, the usual," the Doctor said with a wave of his hand. "I made it as far as L'Enfant Plaza, but what with the crowds and the stalled trains and the bears it just wasn't worth it."

"Bears?" Sheppard asked.

"Mmm, yes, big ones…"

They walked just out of her hearing, and Maria didn't bother trying to stop them. She walked all the way around the Winnie instead, and tried to squint through the tinted windows. In the end she would've settled for writing a parking ticket, but realized she didn't even have the Doctor's name. When she went back out to the street, Franklin was staring dumbfounded at the receding shapes of the Doctor and his traveling companions. Maria stopped and stood next to him.

"They from your unauthorized vehicle?" he asked dully.

She nodded. "I, uh, their registration checks out and everything. Guess we don't need to call it in."

Franklin nodded slowly. "That guy with the banana pinched my ass."

"Really?"

"Hmm." He paused. "And that kid asked if we really picked a brother as the president."

"He did?" She wanted to speculate on where the kid had been for the last year and a half, but something told her that ultimately, she probably did not want to know. Instead she went for her radio. "Headquarters, this is Alvarez. Any reports of trouble at L'Enfant Plaza Metro station?"

_"We got nothing,"_ the dispatcher replied. _"Why do you ask?"_

"Just…a hunch," Maria said.

_"What kind of hunch?"_

She looked at Franklin, who shrugged. "Put a couple additional units on standby in the area and, uh, contact animal control. Just in case."

_"Copy that,"_ the dispatcher said warily. Maria wondered how she was going to explain that one if she was wrong…or, worse, if she was right. And whether there'd be any surveillance tape of a chunky guy in an orange fleece in the station either way.

"We gonna report them?" Franklin said, nodding at where the four strangers had traveled out of sight.

Maria shook her head. "They're just peaceful travelers," she said, and wondered why she believed them.


End file.
